Mitch4 sends this in: “Okay, I guess I see what is meant to be a joke, just in the unlikelihood of the executioner stopping to satisfy his curiosity, or the condemned man politely offering this sort of accurate explanation. Or perhaps in the gallows humor (ahem!) of how he describes the value of the bottom half.
But I couldn’t shake the feeling this must be based on some famous incident, of history or legend. But got nowhere asking Google things like “what members of the French aristocracy after the Revolution wore bifocals?”. (Though it did see some sort of nexus through Benjamin Franklin, a century earlier.)”
Comics I Don't Understand 
Presumably this was not based on an actual event, but the timing does sort of work. Bifocals were invented no later than the 1780s, probably earlier and probably in London, but did not become well-known until the 1790s, so it is plausible that an executioner during the Reign of Terror (1793 – 1794) would not have seen them before. It is much less plausible, of course, that an executioner would have interrupted his work for this discussion or even have noticed that there was anything unusual about the spectacles.
Nobody said “homies” in the 18th century, but this presumably is a translation from French, so it perhaps should not be considered an anachronism. If the condemned man really did have friends in the crowd, his pointing out that fact would have put them at risk. Maybe the intention is to create dissension by implying that an unspecified portion of the revolutionaries looking on are actually sympathizers.
Just to be clear, Ben Franklin did not live “a century earlier” than the French Revolution!
Thank you Powers. I was momentarily confusing the two ways of referring to centuries, and in a moment of befuddlement took “seventeen hundreds” and “Eighteenth Century” as different; though of course they are the same (apart from quibbles about the single years at start and end).
And indeed it is a commonplace that the French Revolution shortly followed, and in some ways was inspired by, the American Revolution — both in the late Eighteenth Century. Franklin’s mission to France for the American republic put him in touch with many French aristocrats, and perhaps he communicated some of his scientific or practical accomplishments, including popularization (though probably not complete invention) of bifocals.
Isn’t this the artist who often reuses his art and just throws a new caption in? It certainly strikes me as that’s what’s going on here, he is reusing art which had a less confusing caption first time round, probably nothing to do with bifocals, just something about asking the executioner to hold his glasses. Tight on a deadline, relooking over previous artwork, he then made himself giggle with this speech about explaining bifocals…
Powers — maybe nobody said “homies” back then, but they did say “hommes”.
Nobody said “homies” in the 18th century,
True, but anachronisms are rife. A few minutes ago, I was watching NCIS: Origins, set in the early 1990s, and heard a woman say “Adorbs.”
I kept obsessing about how the aristo could just reach around the pillory thing to grab his glasses.